Vison of Life...It speaks about my views towards what's happening around us, though many of the things represents Pune, a becoming Metro in Maharashtra,India yet most of us live in similar city life. In city day to day life all we face is problems around us; from traffic to water to slums to power supply & many more, but who has solutions? That's why the name
Vison of Life!
Sanjay Deshpande

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Fitness of Home! ( gharacha fitness)

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we
can go as we are and not be questioned...Maya Angelou

Well the sentiments of the African socialist get perfectly reflected from the
quote about the feelings of most of us towards the four wall which we call home
but how safe is this home of ours, we rarely ask this question to our own self!
Many will wonder with the heading of the write-up as fitness is the term used
for living creatures where as a home is made up of bricks & concrete so how
the term fitness can be tagged with home?

Well we need to understand attitude of the most people towards their home. We
usually go with the aesthetics of any thing why home & when we call
some thing as a good home it’s mainly the interiors, color scheme, furnishing
etc. But we rarely look towards the strength or durability of home. Neither we
are interested in this aspect while buying the home nor afterwards is my experience
with most of the home buyers. Rarely I have faced the questions on this front
of home i.e. what is the strength of concrete, which type of cement has
been used & how we confirm the strength of the frame work of home. And let
me remind you one need not have to be an engineer to ask these questions. Even
when we buy a car or a two wheeler we ask the questions like what’s its engines
cc or mileage or average & things like that but when it come to a home we
turn a blind eye on our curiosity! I often wonder what happens to most of the
customer when they are buying a thing like home which is supposed to serve
their generations; we are least interested to things which in later years are
going to contribute towards the term fitness of their own home!

As solid & durable home has to be made accordingly then only it will
be giving us the least maintenance. The frame work has to be with proper
strength of concrete as well properly cured & the masonry work along with
door & window frames firmly fitted making a monolithic structure together.
Then only it can stand fit for years. Interiors & paints are after all like
a make up on a face but the skin as well the bone structure of the home has to
be strong enough then only the make will look good is a fact which we ignore. Many
a times we have seen cracks in even new home wall & we wonder what’s the
reason? In our city most of the plaster work is done with sand which has major
amount of the clay in it & it’s this clay which produce cracks after some
time because of temperature difference in the surrounding. Not that these
cracks are structurally dangerous but they look ugly giving unfit look to the
home at the same time they do became main cause for water seepage in rainy
season damaging the paint as well interior look of the home. This is just one
example of unfitness of a home.

In many recent projects we must be seeing a line about Earth quake proof
design, actually nothing is earth quake proof; earth quake resistant is a
proper term. As per the IS code for buildings there are many parameters &
the whole world has been divided in five zones of earth quake possibility. Pune
city comes in zone 3 & there are some design criteria’s while designing the
structure of the buildings in this zone. A design pertaining to these criteria’s
is called as earth quake resistant! It’s a way of strengthening the structural
elements like foundation, columns & beams & slabs which are in a way
base of any building. A good structure can help in avoiding many future maintenance
rather fitness issues of a home & that’s why no harm in being a bit curious
at the time of construction as k few questions to your developer about the
same.
Once we took possession of a home then this fitness responsibility is also ours
as however best a car may be yet it requires regular servicing is what we all
know & takes our car for the same periodically but again when it comes to
our home? Ask a simple question to our own self when it’s last time you have
done servicing of your own home? Here again many will laugh at this silly
question as what’s this new fancy idea of servicing the home! It’s much simpler
& less money consuming than our car!

All
we have to do is understand it properly & follow. Even the new Housing Law has
got the provision of building audit which means periodical checking of the home
& its services. Like our own body has a complex net work of blood veins, tissues
& bones a home is also made up of similar things but with different
terminology. The concealed plumbing pipes of water lines as well electric
cables are in a way our home's veins &the plaster from inside to outside is
like tissues under the skin & the main frame of building inclusive of
columns & beams are like bones. Like our body's daily wear & tear many
activities are going in & around the home making all these organs weak
& wear. Like we need regular medical check ups they too need some check up
& preventive measures though not as regularly as a human body needs but unfortunately
we neglect it.

We install AC's on the outer walls of home & puncture the wall for getting
the AC pipes & cable in. While making holes for these provisions we break
the wall masonry & plaster which can create cracks all along the surface of
the plaster which in turn gets loosen up & either may fail down or can
carry water in side in rainy season causing seepage. We have attached terraces
to our rooms & we rarely clean up the pipes carrying rain water down &
then they get clogged up making rain water seep in our walls from the terrace.
Our electric cables we never test periodically & there might be s break up
due to short circuit which may lead to a fire after some years. Many of the
homes now have a pipe gas provision maintenance of which is neglected & we
read the news of a gas leak or blast! We change our sanitary wear or wall
tiles in the toilet & in the process we end up breaking water proofing of
the base of the toilet causing leakage in flat below or we fit solar on top
terrace & in process damage the water proofing of the terrace again causing
leakage in top floor flat in monsoon! We enclose our balconies after getting
possession with all sorts of grills & aluminum sliding windows & for
that do all type of breakage & never re-plaster it properly leave apart
painting. Then the common scene is making awning for the terraces, it does look
good but do we pay enough attention how we fit it? So many things keep
happening around by which a home has to undergo wear & tear & gets damaged
in process.

Like we pay attention to our own body only when we face some
illness & rarely go for routine checkups when we are fit, it’s equally important
to have routine check up for the various such systems of home as well the equipments
engaged in serving the same. And the solution is along with periodical checking of such
services making AMC i.e. annual maintenance contract of things like Lifts,
Water pumps, Generator, Solar Water Heaters, Water Purifier plants & any
such item which is working round the clock to make our life comfortable. Again
not many societies have adopted such good practices & try to save on in
their maintenance expenses & then we read about accidents from lift failures
& fires due to short circuits! There are agencies out in the market that
does provide these services & when it comes to maintenance of things like
Lift or Generators, it’s always advisable to go through the official service
provider even if they may be a bit costlier on face.

A fit home is equally important just like our own fitness; then
only we can have the feeling of safety inside it as Maya Angelou has quoted. And
for that the poor home can’t do any thing, it’s the person living in it has to
go for it; that's our duty towards the four walls which we call home!
Sanjay Deshpande